Members of the Institute of Directors (IoD) have said that they think the new Conservative government should make bringing down the deficit a priority.

A survey was conducted with 1,211 Institute of Directors members taking part and the end result indicated that they believe the deficit reduction should be achieved mainly through spending cuts rather than tax rises. Other major policy areas that the business body’s members would like to see addressed by the government are infrastructure and education.

Over half of the members who took part in the survey, which was conducted immediately after the general election, strongly disagreed with increases in national insurance, income tax, VAT and business rates.

According to the research, improving the UK’s broadband capability, investing in energy generation and spending more on railways was said to be important to members. As well as this, a crackdown on tax avoidance was also top of the list.